Optimization of Chessboard Scanning Strategy Using Genetic Algorithm in Multi-Laser Additive Manufacturing Process

Abstract

Residual stress and manufacturing time are two serious challenges that hinder the widespread industry adoption and implementation of the powder-bed fusion (PBF) process. Commercial Multi-Laser PBF (ML-PBF) systems have been developed by several vendors in recent years, which dramatically increase the production rate by employing more heat sources (up to 4 laser beams). Although numerous research works conducted toward mitigation of the effects of residual stress on printed parts in the Single Laser PBF (SL-PBF) process, no research work on this topic has been reported for the ML-PBF process to date. One of the most efficient real-time approaches to mitigate the influence of residual stress and as such the process lead time effectively is to improve the scanning strategy. This approach can be also implemented effectively in the ML-PBF process. In this work, we extend the previously developed GAMP (Genetic Algorithm Maximum Path) strategy for optimizing the scanning path in ML-PBF. The E-GAMP (the Extended GAMP) strategy manipulates the printing topology of the islands and generates more thermally efficient scanning patterns for the chessboard scanning strategy in ML-PBF. This strategy extends the single thermal heat source to multiple ones (2 as well as 3 lasers). To validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, we simulate the thermal distribution throughout a simple rectangular layer by ABAQUS for both the traditional successive scanning strategy and the E-GAMP strategy. The results demonstrate that the E-GAMP strategy considerably decreases the manufacturing time while it reduces the maximum temperature gradient, or in other words, generates a more uniform temperature distribution throughout the exposure layer.